So there I was, late last year, up on site at Mangaroon, looking into the pit at Two Peaks and lamenting, trying to drill nuggety gold systems. Thanks to Starlink, I get a phone call from George at Petra. A bit surprised, I take the call, and George asks me, "Dean, if money was no problem, what would you do with it?" Now, that's a very, very dangerous question to ask an exploration geologist, but the answer was simple, because for the past two years, it's been a hard, it's been a hard run for Dreadnought and some of the juniors, junior side, and we've been working hard to delivering our self-funded explorer model, bringing the Star of Mangaroon online, producing, producing gold and printing money, so that we could then use that money to deliver the life-changing discovery across our projects that would make Dreadnought great again.
I told George I'd bring forward exploration at Mangaroon across our camp-scale targets. I'd do the met test work at the critical metals at Stinger to show if we can produce multiple critical metals aside from rare earths. I would bring Metzke's Find into the production profile, so that when Star of Mangaroon was done producing, we'd be producing from another operation down in the Goldfields. Most importantly, I would deliver the big aircore program at Illaara, a program that Newmont had wanted to do 10 years ago, and a program that we've been wanting to do ever since we acquired that project from Newmont in 2019, but never had the funds to do it justice. George and the team at Petra liked the answer.
Next thing I know, we have AUD 18 million, giving us over AUD 20 million in the bank, putting us in the strongest financial position we have ever been in. I messaged the team, Frank and Chappie, and I tell them what's happened. They were pretty excited, and I told them that we would not only be judged by the exploration success in delivering the discovery, but more importantly and more critically, we would be judged on our ability to deliver major exploration programs across both Mangaroon and Illaara. And the first response I get... Oh, I asked them to brainstorm what it is that we're going to need to deliver these programs and reiterated at the end that we must deliver the programs that I just promised. And the first response I get from Chappie is a FedEx guy giving me the thumbs up.
On the back of that, we got our motto for the year: DreadX, the team that delivers. But it's not just merch and fun. Dreadnought is about to embark on the largest exploration program we have done in our seven-year history, with 80,000-100,000 meters of drilling, 10,000 soil samples. If there is a major discovery to be made at Illaara and Mangaroon, we will make them both this year. But we have not strayed off our core strategy: finding more gold faster. We will continue to develop the high-grade deposits and generate strong cash flow from the Star of Mangaroon through our joint venture with Black Cat and milling at Paulsens Mill, and also accelerating Metzke's Find to fill its place. Deliver the large-scale gold discovery, our aircore program at Illaara, and the camp-scale prospects we've been delivering at Mangaroon.
We continue to progress the Gifford Creek Carbonatite and commercialize our portfolio and discovery defined by third parties with our two tech joint ventures that are ongoing at Money Intrusion and Bresnahan. Starting off with what's going to make us money in the near term. Star of Mangaroon got 27,000 ounces, high grade, 11.1 grams per tonne. According to our last study, updated at the end of the year, at 6,500 Aussie gold, that prints AUD 100 million in free cash flow. That's a 50/50 profit share with Black Cat, up to AUD 80 million, and then 70% of the profit goes to Dreadnought beyond AUD 80 million free cash flow. Black Cat is fully funding up to AUD 10 million. It's expected to only be AUD 5 million in upfront cash costs.
They'll manage the development, haulage, and processing of that, completely hands-off from the Dreadnought team, so we can focus on exploration. Approval is under assessment. We're on top of the pile. We're going back and forth with the Mines department. Star of Mangaroon will be mining and processing this year. This takes our attention to Metzke's Find, where we'll be drilling again here on the fifth of March, with the team mobilizing on the second. We currently have a high-grade resource there that we delivered a few years ago, 15,000 ounces at 6.8 g/t . We've extended that in the last drill program at the end of the year, 250 meters to the north. We have a 6,000-meter RC drill program that's going to extend that resource to the north, up to surface, and also at depth.
We're aiming to double or triple that resource, which will then go into resource updates by mid-year, optimizations, all the study support work for the geotech and geomet, which is already commencing, and then have the studies by the end of the year and commence approvals so that when Star of Mangaroon is done being mined, we can start producing at Metzke's Find under a similar model, looking for a partner to help us develop that, so that we can take in that cash and focus on what's actually going to make Dreadnought great again, and that is another gold discovery. So starting with the Illaara Gold Project, why Illaara? So Illaara is a belt-scale opportunity adjacent to a multi-million-ounce belt. We're next door to Ora Banda, with 2.1 million ounces of gold, and that Davyh urst has already processed multiple million ounces of gold.
Got Aurenne Group , their resources, Ballard Mining. Next door to us, just 20-40 km away , we have millions of ounces of gold in resource and millions of ounces of gold that has been produced historically. The Illaara Belt, we have over 800 strike, 800 sq km of ground, 70 km strike of greenstone belt that has never been drilled. So when you look at the greenstone belts around that area, we have strong gold anomalism at Illaara, and there's never been a systematic aircore program. Classic bread and butter gold exploration. There's nothing genius here. We have a nice satellite profile. There's a little bit of cover. We have proven gold, multi-million ounces next door. All it's waiting for is for the big aircore program to be undertaken. And we look at why hasn't it been done?
They had very limited gold exploration in the early years. We had iron ore explorers, Portman and Cliffs, controlled this area for many years from the advent of modern gold exploration. When they went into trouble, they dropped this ground, and Newmont picked up this ground in 2016 under the same guise of what we have. There's a greenstone belt that has not been drilled. They actually cleared 30 kilometers of tracks to undertake an aircore program, but for a number of reasons, they were not able to deliver that program. The tracks were still cleared, the pegs were still in the ground when we acquired the project from them in 2019.
We've been waiting for this day to be in a funded position to deliver a program that Newmont wanted to do 10 years ago, and that we've been wanting to do since 2019. Our phase one aircore drilling, the crews are on site, and the drill rig is showing up this week. We have 40,000-50,000 meters of drilling, over 550 holes that will cover 25-30 km strike length of the greenstone belt. That'll take 3 months, where results will be pouring in throughout that entire program, and we'll roll straight into phase two, which will follow up on the anomalous drill results from phase one and add additional targets as defined by our new Chief Geologist, Dr. Jamie Robinson, who we've been able to score from Gold Road.
Thank you, Gold Road, for no longer existing, so that we could pick up one of the best structural geologists we could ask for. We're very, very excited to deliver that drill program, and that is going to run all year and generate a very strong baseline of news flow. In addition to our RC drilling at Metzke's, we'll have two rigs going here in the next couple of weeks. We'll then move back up to Mangaroon once it calms down or cools off a little bit. Similar to Illaara, Mangaroon is a very unloved gold region, very little drilling.
Over the past few years, in addition to following up Star of Mangaroon, getting distracted by the rare earths there for a little bit, having the Money Intrusion with our tech joint venture, we have defined seven camp-scale targets through systematic stream sediment sampling across our 4,000-5,000 sq km of tenure. That's identified seven camp-scale targets of very strong gold and gold in-stream anomalism with pathfinders, prospective lithostructural settings, all of them with a higher tenor and bigger scale than Star of Mangaroon, where all the historical gold exploration and gold mining is. We are very, very excited to get stuck into defining targets and having targets drilled out here this year. We've already gotten an early start on some of those, like Steve's, and end of last year, the Minga Bar Shear Zone, Cullens Find , and Midnight Star.
This is a 7 km long corridor of opportunity, and our first pass drilling out here hit 25 m at 1 g/t from 22 meters down at Cullins, and 7 km to the north, 4 meters at 3 g/t and 3.2 g/t . This is a very live structure. These are some of the thickest gold intercepts that Mangaroon has seen, which is important because a lot of people perceived Mangaroon to only be a bunch of stars, a bunch of small, high-grade things to go after. We looked at this star as, as smoke and something that would be identified by prospectors looking for nuggets. We said, through systematic exploration, there's no reason why this region should not have large, multi-million-ounce gold discoveries. So seeing some of the thickest gold intercepts out here to date, it's not a 1-2-meter high-grade vein, thick oxide mineralization.
We're very excited about what our gold exploration is going to identify out here through our systematic soils follow-up drilling. So RC rig drilling at Metzke's here in the next week or two, and then end of April, start of May, back up here at Cullens Find , Midnight Star, chasing up this corridor of opportunity. Which takes us to the critical metals, an opportunity, a discovery that we made a few years ago that took us up to AUD 0.10-AUD 0.15, almost a pyrrhic victory at this stage.
Critical metals are a wild ride, as the lithium explorers and developers saw before us. And the Gifford Creek, we still see as having massive potential and optionality for our shareholders. But what's most important with critical metals is proving that you can produce a product that is sellable. We did that before we drilled Yin, we showed that we could produce a monazite concentrate before we delivered the resource drill outs. The last couple of years, Stinger has popped up, and it has the Stinger discovery within the Gifford Creek Carbonatite, not only has rare earths, but it has niobium, titanium, scandium, phosphate, and zirconium. End of last year, we drilled a bunch of PQ diamond holes. We have tens of hundreds of kilograms of material that is going to go through a very large met program that is going to see what we can produce from Stinger.
And if we can show that this region is not just about producing a rare earth monazite concentrate and trying to sell that like, like a Hastings that has been taken over by Wyloo next door, if we can show we can produce a niobium or titanium or scandium product alongside these rare earths, that changes the development pathway and options that this region has to get developed to produce multiple critical metals. So this met program is underway. We're doing sample selection and that work, the first phase one, will be running for the first six months of this year, and then phase two running till the end of the year. It'll be a very significant program, and we're very, very excited to have that running in the background. So our strategy remains as, as always: deliver the high-grade deposits, generate cash flow.
But this year, we get to put in the biggest effort we've ever had on delivering the large-scale gold discovery, which is what's going to change Dreadnought's and make us great again. And to say that we get goosebumps when we think about finally being able to deliver these programs we've dreamt about for so long is a, is a very, very exciting opportunity for us this year... Gifford Creek Carbonatite site, unlocking that value in the background and continuing to work with tech and our commercial partners. So what does that look like as a work plan summary? Star of Mangaroon, approvals and commencement of mining and production for the rest of the year. Metzke's, we have resource extension and drilling underway.
Our first phase met, and geotech work is underway, which will feed into a resource update at mid-year and internal study work, pit optimizations, which will allow us to focus our second round of geotech and geomet drilling to have scoping studies and approvals underway by the end of the year. Be a lot of news flow on the Metzke's Find and development on the Star of Mangaroon. Aircore drilling, teams are on site, Wallace Drilling showing up soon.
The team from Omni and Emmeline is doing a fantastic job running that program. We're looking forward to have that running all year in the background. Continuous news flow, lots of assay results coming from that program. We have the RC rig going from that resource extension work at Metzke's Find, moving up to Mangaroon, doing the RC drilling at Cullins to Midnight Star, following that up. We have the team from OzEx helping us deliver the surface geochemical surveys at Mangaroon, putting us in position for the second half of the year to be drilling targets and making discoveries at all of our camp-scale targets at Mangaroon, and the metallurgical work progressing in the background.
At Dreadnought's, we have some fantastic new shareholders in our top 20. Thanks to Petra. We're very, very excited to have them on board. We have an expanded team. Jamie Robinson addition will take our already excellent and top-notch operational team and take our technical capabilities to a new level. So thank you very much. If you want to know more, please come to the booth. Also, this is a pitch. I have 10-15 minutes. We're going to be doing a live InvestorHub webinar with live Q&A next week, so please submit questions early, join us for that, and sign up for our InvestorHub. Thank you very much!